Debugger for Iptables

I'm looking for an easy way to follow a packet through the iptables rules. This is not so much about logging, because I don't want to log all traffic (and I only want to have LOG targets for very few rules).

Something like Wireshark for Iptables. Or maybe even something similar to a debugger for a programming language.

Thanks Chris

Note: It doesn't have to be a fancy GUI tool. But it must do more than just showing a package counter or so.

Update: It almost looks as if we can't find anything that provides the functionality that is asked for. In that case: Let's at least find a good technique that's based on iptables logging - which can be easily turned on and off, and doesn't require to write iptables rules redundantly (having to write the same rule for -j LOG and -j ...)

I can't think of a direct solution, but I can think of a round about way of tracking a packet.

Log each rule with a log prefix directive (--log-prefix "Rule 34")
Generate a test packet or packet stream with scapy and set the TOS field to something unique
grep the log file output for that TOS setting and see which rules logged it.

If you have a recent enough kernel and version of iptables you can use the TRACE target (Seems to be builtin on at least Debian 5.0). You should set the conditions of your trace to be as specific as possible and disable any TRACE rules when you are not debugging because it does spew a lot of information to the logs.

TRACE
This target marks packes so that the kernel will log every rule which match the packets as those traverse the tables, chains, rules. (The ipt_LOG or ip6t_LOG module is required for the logging.) The packets are logged with the string prefix: "TRACE: tablename:chainname:type:rulenum " where type can be "rule" for plain rule, "return" for implicit rule at the end of a user defined chain and "policy" for the policy of the built in chains. It can only be used in the raw table.

If you added rules like this

iptables -t raw -A PREROUTING -p tcp --destination 192.168.0.0/24 --dport 80 -j TRACE
iptables -t raw -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination 192.168.0.0/24 --dport 80 -j TRACE

You will be supplied with output that looks like this.

# cat /var/log/kern.log | grep 'TRACE:'
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325658] TRACE: raw:PREROUTING:policy:2 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.12.152 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=80 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325689] TRACE: mangle:PREROUTING:policy:1 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.12.152 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=80 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325713] TRACE: nat:PREROUTING:rule:1 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.12.152 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=80 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: nat:nat.1:rule:1 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.12.152 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=80 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: mangle:INPUT:policy:1 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: filter:INPUT:rule:2 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: filter:in_world:rule:1 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: filter:in_world_all_c1:return:2 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: filter:in_world:rule:2 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)
Mar 24 22:41:52 enterprise kernel: [885386.325731] TRACE: filter:in_world_irc_c2:return:2 IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1d:7d:aa:e3:4e:00:04:4b:05:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.32.18 DST=192.168.32.10 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=128 ID=30561 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=53054 DPT=3128 SEQ=3653700382 ACK=0 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (020405B40103030201010402)

Three answers on one post:

1) Debug by script:

#!/bin/bash
debug() {
    if [ -n "$debug" ]; then
        $@ || echo -e "The command which launched the error:\n$@"
    else
        $@
    fi
}
debug=1
IPTABLES="debug /sbin/iptables"

$IPTABLES -P INPUT DROP
$IPTABLES -P OUTPUT DROP
....

2) Debug by syslog

From this website :http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/iptables_fw.html

If you want to make a syslog entry of dropped packets, change:

# Drop all other traffic
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

To:

# Create a LOGDROP chain to log and drop packets
/sbin/iptables -N LOGDROP
/sbin/iptables -A LOGDROP -j LOG
/sbin/iptables -A LOGDROP -j DROP

# Drop all other traffic
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -j LOGDROP


You may also want to configure the --log-level to log dropped packets to a separate file instead of /var/log/messages:

# Drop all other traffic
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -j LOGDROP --log-level debug


/etc/syslog.conf change:

# Send iptables LOGDROPs to /var/log/iptables
kern.=debug                                             /var/log/iptables

Reload the syslogd service for the change to take effect.
/sbin/service syslog reload

3) No debug, nice iptables edit:

Also this can be helpfull: http://www.fwbuilder.org/

had the same question and found Zoredache pointing to TRACE / ipt_LOG was the solution!

Additionally I found a script which inserts/removes LOG-rules preceding all currently active iptables rules. I tried it out and found it to be a really nice tool. - Output is similar to the TRACE solution - Advantage: it works on the active iptables configuration, no matter where it was loaded from. You can turn logging on/off on the fly! You don't need to modify any firewall-scripts which might have been generated by Firewall Builder or tool whatever you use... - Disadvantage: without modification, the script creates LOG-rules for ALL active rules. Instead, when using TRACE rules, you'll probably restrict logging to addresses/services/connections for which you want to investigate iptables processing now.

Anyhow, I like the aproach :) Kudos to Tony Clayton, have a look: http://lists.netfilter.org/pipermail/netfilter/2003-March/043088.html

Regards, Chris

Debugger for Iptables

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